


can't rely on my heart to beat it

by sazzafraz



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Character Study, Dubious Consent, M/M, POV Second Person, Rough Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-28
Updated: 2013-01-28
Packaged: 2017-11-27 07:14:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/659304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sazzafraz/pseuds/sazzafraz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek Hale becomes a real boy and gets a normal life. Except not even a little.</p>
            </blockquote>





	can't rely on my heart to beat it

**Author's Note:**

> So this was meant to be about Derek getting a cat?
> 
> But then this happened?
> 
> Anyway, Derek gets a cat and is still shitty at being a person, who's surprised.
> 
> This also officially marks me posting regularly again. By which I mean everything will update in the next four days, life providing.
> 
> Also, a thank you to Sandra for just telling me what sex scenes she wanted. There wouldn't be any without her helpful whispering.

\--  
  
‘What if I said I could make it all go away?’  
  
Marie has fae blood and a small cramped apartment in a safe house specifically designed for people like you and Laura. She doesn’t understand morals or consequences or owning up to your mistakes.She held your tongue in your mouth and licked the story from your eyelids. She held it on her tongue and called you sad and stupid and foolish and brave. She see’s no shame in what you did, not really, just an ill thought out plan by a young boy. She thinks you could grow into a tragic hero, if that’s the path you want. Her apartment smells like elderberries and vanilla and sour rotted blood. You spend more time here than you should.  
  
You are seventeen and everything you love is gone.  
  
You know how you look to her; sweet and sad and she pities you, doesn’t she, thinks you are the most broken thing that has ever crossed her threshold. She has said, numerous times, that if she had liked you less she’d have killed you and eaten you. At the time that hadn’t seemed so terrible.  
  
Marie offers you the bracelet, flat and rose gold, looped runes catching the light. ‘It’ll give you peace sometimes.’ She says and you believe her. Marie is very old and very wise and lies are not likely to fall from her mouth.  
  
She wraps it around your wrist and presses the clasp closed.  
  
\--  
  
It takes you a week to notice, what with all the repressing you’ve been doing since Kate-  
  
Since Kate-  
  
Since _Ka_ -  
  
You buried all of it.  
  
The thunder that used to turn you inside out is gone. You flex your jaw and think about what she did and you feel nothing.  
  
\--  
  
No, really, you feel nothing.  
  
Not the wolf, or the moon, or anything you ever associated with your pelt or your den. Any part of you that was connected to that filters out. Sometimes you look around your small two room and think that humans have a bum deal. Sometimes you look around and Laura is gone under the moon and you think that no one is trying to kill you and Laura has long since stopped thinking of you as her wolf.    
  
\--  
  
Laura is drunk on the floor, curled around the ugly gnome your mother bought specifically because Uncle Peter would hate it. She’s been drunk for a month, big hole in the inheritance to get there. She’s sobbing. You try to comfort her but your hand twitches against her shoulder and the yowling half buried noise in her throat turns to claws turns to your scraped apart shoulder.  
  
She can’t tell you’re her brother anymore.  
  
\--  
  
You move out a week later. Laura moves in with the O’Donald’s.  
  
You get a job at the local library and pretend you like it. Eventually you do.  
  
\--  
  
Moons pass and you do not take it off, after five more you’ve already begun to forget the smell of the woods, the house, Kate’s hands on your ribs.  
  
\--  
  
On the crow moon when your blood should be bursting from your skin you sit at home with a pizza and methodically work through your course work. You applied and were accepted to early admissions for Stanford. For obvious reasons, you declined. There ar8e schools chomping at the bit to have you in New York but the fun has gone out of it. You contemplate a history major, you’re second strongest subject, and it feels right to hold onto the past.  
  
Eventually hunger bests you and you do to the local chinese place, small and cramped and dripping animal fats. You order three things that are deep fried. You’re not here to impress anyone. A dog starts following you on your way home. It slinks down an alleyway when you stop to check your phone, woofing and barking at a cat. The noise stops and you think the dog has gone home to it’s owners. There’s a high pitched hiss followed by sounds of pain. You step back and look into the alley, there is now a cat and a dog losing a fight.  
  
The cat rounds on the dog hissing, and launches itself forward, the dog moves forward, too fast you realise, the cat anticipates and darts up, claws landing in it’s throat and ripping across. It puts the dog down long enough for the cat to neatly and precisely slit open it’s leg. It’s a flesh wound and the dog dashes away before you can check to see it it’s alright. The cat sits down in the blood and licks a paw. It meows just once.  
  
For all that you’ve spent the majority of your life a vicious creature of the night you’ve never been that great about violence. You move toward the cat slowly and obviously and notice that it’s back paw is at an odd angle and that it’s missing a patch of blond-ish fur from it’s head. Against a lot of better judgement you turn away and begin trekking home. You could take the pain away if you took off the bracelet but you would have to be yourself, the old one, to do it.  
  
You hear a mewl from behind you. The cat is very determinedly walking behind you, dripping blood on the sidewalk.  
  
‘Fuck.’ You say and when the cat catches up it leans against you and huffs like it agrees  
  
\--  
  
Cleaned up the cat looks like someone took an impressionist sensibility and a bunch of recessive genes and played around. From the tip of it’s black nose the colour streaks out in black, white, and various shades of ginger. To the tips of it’s ear to it’s tail there are two large stripes, almost like a skunk, more swirls and soft strokes of colour decorating it from back to belly. It has snow white paws and hind legs. For a maybe avatar of the red horse the cat is disturbingly like something you’d find in a glossy magazine.  
  
‘Oh isn’t she pretty.’ The vet says and you can’t help but think _this cat took down a rabid dog and bathed in it’s blood_. This cat, within thirty seconds of meeting, had already established itself as a better hunter than you could even hope to be.  
  
‘I should go.’ You say, the cat is rolling onto her back and purring as the vet checks her stitches. Exhibitionist.  
  
The cat gives an indignant meow when you try to leave. You ignore it and keep walking. The entrance is a disturbing number of twists and turns away. You’re finally free and crossing the lobby when a slightly more pathetic meow pauses you.  
  
‘Uh,’ the receptionist says, ‘isn’t that your cat?’  
  
‘No.’  
  
The cat meows again like you’re being particularly trying.  
  
‘You are not my cat.’ You say ineffectually, the cat gets up and twirls around your legs, the ginger stripes up the back of her pantaloons bright against the white.  
  
‘Oh good,’ the vet says coming down the hallway, ‘you’ve found Sugarbottom.’  
  
‘Sugar-’ someone named this cat that?  
  
‘I checked her tag. No accounting for taste.’ The vet says, ‘in any case, she seems to have adopted you.’  
  
‘Can’t you take her?’ You say. ‘Doesn’t she have owners?’  
  
The vet looks at him as if he is very stupid and she does not have much time. ‘Mr Hale, does anyone really _own_ a cat?’  
  
‘I’ve never _had_ a pet.’ Even to your own ears it sounds like a petulant whine. Sugarbottom starts climbing up your pant leg, carefully not digging into skin, she stops when she’s perched on your shoulder, tail hanging heavy and purr loud as an airplane in your ear.  
  
The receptionist just laughs and laughs and laughs.  
  
\--  
  
The nightmares start that week. You dream of being burned alive for hours, flesh peeling back and covered in layers of ask. Your eyeballs turn to dust in their sockets. You are alone. There is a danger that breeds inside you. A demon on your chest. It happens every night, and every morning you check your bracelet. Check that it’s still on your wrist and not burning away like your sanity.  
  
Sometimes you wake up still on fire, even if it’s under the skin. There is a man in the forest who tastes of power you would gladly never have. He eats the moon and all the boys in the woods.  
  
\--  
  
‘One of us has to go back.’ Laura says over the phone, you can hear champagne laughter in the background. Paul will propose soon, he asked for your blessing moons ago. ‘Check some things.’  
  
‘I’ll go,’ you say. If nothing else, it’ll give Sugarbottom some new wildlife to decimate.  
  
\--  
  
Wolves, out of no particular bit of prejudice or hate but simple long habit, tend to clump together a whole species of smells as human. Your father was a human, your mother made a million lewd jokes about having to cover up the stench. You thought it was unkind when you stopped to think about it at all.  
  
Moving back to Beacon Hills is easier without the wild beneath your skin. No one looks twice when you’re a few pounds heavier than you would be at your peak and your sweater matches your eyes but the shirt underneath says you’ve run out of laundry powder. You have glasses now, a little too big to be attractive, for when you spend nights archiving or watching dumb youtube cat videos. You wish, sometimes, that Sugarbottom was the type of cat to sit in a teacup and look pretty. She’ll sit in the cup, even let you take the picture, but her face always says _world domination_ and not _America’s favourite house pet_.  
  
Your apartment is nice and tiny on the second floor of a building old enough to have a plaque on the front. You spend a few hours arguing with yourself about whether or not you could live with ‘Rimshot’ in your bathroom or if it’s sort of like writing a suicide note in sharpie. Eventually you throw the least offensive colours on the ground and wait for Sugarbottom to get blood in her fur. You’ll use whichever one sticks to her the longest. When you apply for the local library they accept you with open arms and a full handed butt squeeze you let go but politely ensure never happens again. Life is simple enough, you drive to the Hale property once or twice a week and nothing seems too terrible. You go to work and you go home. You get more obsessed with your cat. You watch all of Battlestar Galactica in a four day no sleep marathon. You even start regularly visiting Peter. It’s okay.  
  
Then Sugarbottom gets attacked by a wild animal  
  
Your life promptly falls to shit.  
  
\--  
  
His name is Scott McCall and you really, really want him to like you.  
  
You can’t figure out if it’s because he’s that guy, just the one everyone wants to like them, or if you’ve been an ephebophile all your life and haven’t noticed until now.  
  
The fact that he’s nice to your cat is a huge plus.  
  
‘She’ll be fine,’ he says with a smile. Sugarbottom presses against his chest, long tail twirling across the heavy metal bench and up his chest. He laughs. It’s nice. ‘Cat’s don’t really like me.’  
  
You’ve always been the type for dumb life consuming crushes; wild attraction that has you climbing walls and lying to yourself about who and what you really are. You think it would be impossible for someone not to like you, you think I like you a lot. ‘Why not?’  
  
‘Guess I’m just a dog person,’ he says like a joke. It falls flat for you.  
  
‘Thank you.’ You say and there is slightly too much in the words. Scott tilts his head a little like he’s listening to something.  
  
‘Are you okay?’ He pauses and looks down, ‘it’s just, you uh, sound kind of-’  
  
‘I should go.’ You say quickly. You grab Sugarbottom, who twirls and situates around your neck. ‘I’ll pay for it all on her next visit, right?’  
  
‘That’s the regulars deal. Seriously, you sound off, dude.’ Scott leans forward and you realise you’re leaning forward too. You’re _24_ this is _weird_. ‘Deaton.’  
  
‘Deaton?’  
  
‘Derek.’ A man says from behind you. You turn slowly so you don’t jostle the blanket of fur on your neck. Deaton has one eyebrow raised and a slightly pissed off turn to his mouth. ‘What have you done?’  
  
‘Who are you?’ You pull Sugarbottom into your arms, she settles mostly because she adores attention.  
  
‘A friend of your family.’ The pissed off tic to Deaton’s mouth doesn’t lessen.  
  
Fuck  
  
‘I’ll go outside.’ Scott says and you try, really hard, to not watch him leave. You fail.  
  
When you look back at Deaton his expression is murderous. ‘You’re a wolf.’ He says, heavy on the disgust.  
  
‘That’s a was. I’m something else now.’ You shrug. It doesn’t feel like a heavy admission.  
  
‘I see.’ You roll your eyes and wonder if all veterinarians are this willingly unhelpful. Deaton blinks at you a few times. ‘Scott. Don’t worry about Mr Hale’s bill.’  
  
‘Hale?’ Scott walks back in holding a few cat toys, he looks at you with new interest.  
  
‘Yes, Mr Hale’s bill. It’s covered.’  
  
‘That’s very kind of you.’ You say more snottily than intended.  
  
‘Scott, it’s time for a lesson.’  
  
Deaton leaves and Scott follows. He looks at you like a puzzle and you feel too wired up to say goodbye. The room is dark and foreboding without someone else in it. You realise that Scott couldn’t have possibly of heard Deaton call him back through the door. Not with human ears. There are boxes and boxes of vials with runes etched into the head. The room smells like wolfsbane. There are four wards on each door. You’re a fucking idiot.  
  
\--  
  
You dig through the library and the internet. Turns out all you had to do was check the papers from two months ago. There’s still a whole pile of them propping up one of the doors of the administration section. You walk past them every day.  
  
Two boys were attacked in the woods by a ‘rabid animal’.  
  
Scott McCall and Stiles Stilinski  
  
Both survived  
  
You really are a fucking idiot.  
  
\--  
  
You don’t have sex dreams anymore. Honestly, just the thought of wanting another human being with the ferocity you wanted Ka-  
  
You don’t. It’s easier.  
  
Sometimes your dick does not cooperate and tonight seems like one of those nights you spend manfully willing away a whole mess of biology. The thing is, wolves don’t fuck the way humans do. At least as far as you can tell, you fully admit to being an unreliable source. You’ve only had sex this way a handful of times, senses pressed up against foggy glass. You don’t want to fuck anyone the way you fucked her but you don’t know if that’s you or something else. As a wolf you wanted more, you wanted someone to push you down on the forest, bare moonlight across your back, and fuck in without you having to ask, you wanted to hold someone down for hours and drill your cum in until you could smell it for weeks after. You don’t want soft hands on silk sheets, you don’t want someone to be nice to you. She had to have known that, used that.  
  
The few times sex dreams happen it’s cruel and twisted. You feel her holding your tongue down in your mouth every time, not letting you speak, back then it had been comforting, now it just reminds you that you can’t let others control you. You can’t let go.  
  
This time the fingers don’t stop your tongue. This time it’s a different pair of hands, one’s you only recognise by imagination. His hands slide down and your slick, of course, it’s a dream, and it’s too fast and too thick and you’re too full. Your face ends up in a pile of rotting leaves, the dick in you ramming in and in and never good enough, never in enough for you but you don’t care. You wake up with a mess all over your stomach and your cock still bobbing lightly against your stomach. You try to get off thinking about soft things, human things, but it takes a barely lubed finger fucking shallowly, harshly, and the imagery of savage hands and savage mouths. You waste half a morning trying to burn it out and only succeed in freaking out your cat and using up the lube.    
  
\--  
  
‘Hey,’ Scott says, handing back Sugarbottom’s cage, cat asleep and content inside, and a bag of complimentary kitty treats, ‘good to see you again.’  
  
‘Yeah,’ you says, holding the cage low as you adjust your stance, ‘you too.’  
  
\--  
  
Stiles, who you do not go looking for because that’s weird and illegal and he’s the Sheriff’s kid, basically tied a ribbon around his neck and plopped himself inside your personal orbit. Previous to Scott-n-Stiles’ this orbit was you, your cat, maybe Laura, and a ton of unresolved issues. Stiles takes up residence in the mythology section of the library, endearing himself to half the staff and pissing off the rest. You avoid him but he’s still always just out of your line of sight. Always just out of reach. On a Friday Stiles literally slams the door on his way in, thirteen minutes from the library closing, and runs around muttering and collecting books. Your reaction is never as visceral as it was to Scott, thank god, you work here, but it’s a tug under your heart that gets messed up by your dick. You adjust yourself and go on doing your job. Stiles slams up to the front desk. You don’t watch because that’s weird.  
  
Don’t watch-  
  
Don’t-  
  
He looks right at you and holds, his eyes are really pretty, you hate yourself.  
  
He takes his books and leaves. You breathe easier.  
  
You pick up cat food and takeaway on the drive home. At one of the few sets of traffic lights on your route home you look back. There’s a powder blue jeep a slightly less than inconspicuous distance behind you. You can’t see the driver but there’s a rod of heat and shame crawling up your back. You don’t shake it off, don’t do anything to say you’ve noticed it at all. You get home and Sugarbottom greets you at the door. Beacon Hills doesn’t get heavy traffic, when it’s quiet enough you can hear engines from a block and a half away. If you sit by the window you think you can feel the vibrations through the walls. You can’t but it’s not easier to admit to loneliness, it’s not easier to admit to wanting.  
  
The jeep idles outside your apartment all night and you don’t think about the dream, or Stiles eyes, or anything at all related to the way things used to be.  
  
\--  
  
You dream again and it’s sex again.  
  
This time you have his cock jammed down your throat and you’re not choking through sheer force of will. You’re trying to swallow him down further but he’s rutting down and he’s not going to last long enough. He spills and it comes over your lips, gets stuck on your cheek. You hate that it’s not inside you. Long fingers you’ve seen on book spines wrap around and there’s a thick dryness pushing inside.  
  
This time when you wake up sticky and unsatisfied your cat looks at you like you’re some sort of pervert.  
  
\--  
  
You started doing preschool story time because kids are less confusing than adults and you don’t mind getting covered in animal stickers. You should _stop_ doing story time because it is impossible for you to look dignified with a sticky clump of pink glitter glue in your hair and a defiled bumblebee name tag hanging sadly to your equally defiled and really sort of gross sweater. The sweater was even a sort of nice blue shade. You sigh and Devon, resident IT guy who is anything but resident and has a disproportionate number of off days to on, glares at you from around his zombie einstein mug. You glare a back and gather up your ‘to do’ list. Paperwork, of course. There is a blonde girl sitting at the table you usually commandeer for filling out the surprising amount of paperwork libraries generate.  
  
She’s aggressively ripping pages out of a plain spiral notebook, blue pen flying across the pages of a school textbook. She has her blonde hair piled into a messy bun and a hideous sweatshirt swamping her body.  
  
Mary, an elderly woman who does not work there but sits underfoot with a cup of tea and a bossy attitude anyway, says, ‘that’s Erica, poor sad thing.’  
  
Erica spits out something mean spirited about the books mother. You watch her and the tick that keeps her mouth determined and her hands steady. ‘Why?’  
  
Mary shrugs and sips her tea. ‘She has something wrong with her.’  
  
You breathe out harshly, that one you’re familiar with. ‘She’s at my table.’  
  
‘It’s a library, dear. There are a lot of tables.’  
  
You roll your eyes and take a stack of paper. Erica doesn’t look up as you approach.  
  
‘I usually use this table for paperwork.’ A second after you say it you realise it’s a half obnoxious statement/demand instead of the somewhat friendly overture you were going for.  
  
Erica blinks at you very slowly. ‘Who are you?’  
  
You point to your name on the bumblebee tag. ‘I work here.’  
  
She looks at the damage. ‘You do childrens storytime?’  
  
You sit down, tucking her books -astronomy, gastronomy, five books on specific dialects and a range of comics, mostly DC- to the side. ‘I like kids. Most of them don’t figure out how to be really annoying until after you can distract them with innuendos.’  
  
That startles a laugh out of her. She looks you up and down, speculative. ‘I’m sure the parents appreciate it too.’  
  
You are not unaware of your body or the way the angles of your face fit together. It’s hard to find yourself attractive when you know you’re only wearing the tailored sweater that matches your eyes because the t-shirt underneath has 2 minute spaghetti stains on it. You shrug. ‘They give me food sometimes.’  
  
‘Cookies with their numbers on it, right?’ She smiles, and you think she’s pretty, but she blinks and closes it off, like the idea of someone looking at her is unbearable.  
  
‘Once, turned out to be the husband.’  
  
Erica laughs properly and makes more space for you. ‘Are you going to sit here?’  
  
‘I already am.’  
  
Erica smiles again and rips another page out of her notebook.  
  
\--  
  
‘Dude, let us in.’ Scott says on a Friday night you were going to dedicate to a few episodes of Buffy and a family size microwave popcorn. Even through the door you can smell the heavy and cheesy grease of whatever they have with them. You consider closing your eyes and napping until they go away.  
  
‘We can hear you.’ Stiles knuckles rap across the door.  
  
You pull on pants one handed as you open the door. Between them Scott and Stiles have six boxes of pizza, a bucket of wings, two garlic breads and what looks like a tub of peppermint ripple ice cream.  
  
‘Why?’ You ask. They shrug. ‘And what’s with the personal attack on the safety and liberty of my cholesterol levels?’  
  
‘They had a deal.’ Stiles says, foisting the wings on you, ‘we got you these.’  
  
‘Uh, thanks?’  
  
Scott beams at you. ‘No problem. Stiles dad can’t have junk anymore and we felt like a fix.’’  
  
You’re touched that they thought of you. You’re annoyed they went through with it. ‘Because this could only end well.’  
  
‘You’ve got the Amazing Duo on your side,’ Stiles hip checks you as he walks through the door. ‘You’re covered.’  
  
You don’t say anything to that.  
  
‘Did someone die in here?’ Scott says as he lays down the pizza boxes, ‘because I’m pretty sure I saw an apartment that looked like this on one of those late night medium shows. You should talk to your real estate agent.’ Both you and Stiles make a face. Scott rolls his eyes, ‘my mom likes it, don’t make it weird.’  
  
You roll your eyes and sit down again. Scott and Stiles spread out on your floor and begin devouring their food. It takes a second but you flip over to Buffy and wait for comments.  
  
‘Cool.’ Stiles says around a mouth of cheese crust.  
  
‘So were you born human?’ Scott asks.  
  
‘Dude,’ Stiles says, ‘you can’t just ask people why they’re human.’  
  
Both of them collapse in laughter.  
  
‘It’s just,’ Scott pauses and he and Stiles share a not even slightly subtle look, ‘we’re researching for Deaton.’  
  
‘For Deaton.’ Stiles repeats, ‘and you’d be a helpful resource.’  
  
You look at both of them, sigh, look again, and sigh even deeper. Really? ‘I was born into a family of werewolves, do you really think I can’t tell one from a mile off?’  
  
They relax. Stiles chews his cheese crust thoughtfully. ‘Will you tell us about them?’  
  
Your tongue solidifies in your mouth. ‘No.’  
  
‘That’s fine,’ Scott says sympathetically, ‘Deaton told us what happened to your family.’  
  
Stiles blinks a few times, ‘oh, shit, dude. I’m sorry.’  
  
You try to wave it away with a smile but you don’t smile and your face gets stuck in some unattractive contortion. The silence is uneasy.  
  
Sugarbottom prances out of your room, dirty underwear draped artfully across her back, and deposits herself next to Scott with a meaningful chirp and purr.  
  
‘Christ.’ You pick up the underwear which requires you putting down the wings. Sugarbottom spies her opportunity and jumps into the mostly empty bucket of wings. She wriggles around until only the tail hangs out. You now have a lightly sauced cat.  
  
Both of the boys laugh as you take the bucket to the kitchenette sink and carefully pry the cat out of it. Sugarbottom has her teeth firmly in one of the wings, purring and hissing at you alternatively. You grab her scruff and put her under the water. She’s compliant once she realises you don’t want the chicken.  
  
Scott and Stiles talk in low voices before Scott announces, ‘what do you know about the full moon?’     
  
The bracelet clinks against the metal of the sink. ‘You’ll lose control. You’ll probably kill people.’  
  
‘Oh,’ and with your back turned you can’t tell which one of them said it, ‘how do we not do that?’  
  
You’re silent a beat too long. Even if you were still a wolf you wouldn’t know. The moon was in your blood.    
  
Stiles breathe is shaky and audible. ‘Shit.’  
  
\--  
  
You visit Peter and you talk quietly about the boys and what you think about them and what you’ve done. He doesn’t so much as blink. It’s very nearly the easiest conversation you’ve had in years.  
  
\--  
  
You get a giddy call from Laura a few days after Paul proposes.  
  
‘I would have called but-’ _but we live apart, we haven’t been family in years, where’s your pelt you ripped it off it’s all we had, how could you be so selfish_ , ‘we were out of range.’  
  
‘That’s fine,’ you say, and it is, you’re happy she’s moving on, that she’ll never come back to Beacon Hills, that she’s lying to get out of saying she just doesn’t think about you anymore, ‘Paul asked for my permission ages ago.’  
  
‘Traditional sap,’ she says happily, ‘and you?’  
  
There’s the tail end of an alpha command on the you?  
  
‘Fine.’ You exchange pleasantries. You hang up. Laura says I love you at the end and when you say it back it feels a tad too final for comfort.  
  
\--  
  
Erica only comes to the library on alternate weeks. Her brother, apparently, is a full fledged prodigy in the vein of jackass and while she can count on him having friends over every other weekend, thereby riding her need for excuses, her parents say they need family time and that means face time.  
  
‘I can flake out by being sick most of the time, especially if they think I’m secretly meeting friends,’ she smiles self deprecatingly, ‘my parents are idiots.’  
  
You don’t really get why people wouldn’t want to be friends with Erica. She’s mean spirited, funny in a dark way, and very intelligent. She always smells nice too, but that might be something left over from before. ‘It’s good that they love you.’  
  
Erica shakes her head, ‘love that’s mostly pity isn’t love at all.’  
  
‘Are you quoting something?’  
  
‘Me, ten seconds ago. Mark it down Hale. You’ll need it to remind me of all the little people when I’m famous.’  
  
‘I’ll try to hold on to the memories,’ you say dryly. ‘Don’t you have an appointment today?’  
  
Erica looks sickly all the time, you don’t ask. She’s grateful for that.    
  
Erica shrugs. ‘A man escaped from the hospital this morning. This comatosed guy just walked out of wherever they keep those guys. They’ve shuffled everyone around until after the Sheriff’s done with ‘em.’  
  
You think of the boys. You think of where the moon is in the sky and hate yourself for not listening better as a child. You grab her around the shoulders, she’s scared, but really, in this situation who has more cause for fright? ‘Do they know who?’  
  
‘Uh, Pete? Peter something?’  
  
You feel your heart drop out of your chest. ‘My Uncle. It’s my Uncle.’  
  
‘Oh,’ Erica leans around you and hugs you tightly, ‘Derek, I’m so sorry.’  
  
You hug her back for a few seconds, unsure and heavy hearted.  
  
\--  
  
It’s the full moon that night and you drive around in your car delirious with worry. You walk the older paths, the ones Peter and your mother drilled you on as a child. You search the town all night just in case something decides to run into you. At four in the morning you give up and go home.  
  
Scott and Stiles find you at five forty five, banging on your door until you let them fall over themselves inside. They look pretty shitty but ‘pretty shitty’ is a lot better than what you were expecting.  
  
You fetch them some water and a towel you don’t care about and plop them onto your couch. ‘Are you alright?’  
  
‘Nah, man, we’re fine.’ Scott says.  
  
‘Creepy fuck.’ Stiles shakes and pops his wrist back into it’s joint, ‘you would think there would be an upper limit on the amount of bad touch he could get away with.’  
  
‘He’s not that bad,’ you say and regret the way their eyes flick all over you, like they’re checking for wounds.  
  
‘Yeah, kinda is,’ Stiles says. He has a point, probably. Peter has had both of them in his mouth and it should not sound so intimate but it does. He has swallowed their humanity. Shaken it from their bones. Eaten it with his hands. ‘We should run.’  
  
You’re jealous. Ain’t that a kicker.  
  
‘That won’t help,’ their eyes yellow bright in their skulls focus on you. You start moving the books cluttered around your table away from the bloody teenagers. ‘he’ll catch you.’  
  
‘Why do you know so much?’  
  
‘What aren’t you telling us?’  
  
You cover your face with your hand, the spine of the book you’re holding clunking against your forehead, bracelet clinking your nose.  
  
\--  
  
You miss the first coffee date with Erica because you realise that all your acquaintances are under the age of every kind of consent and that the only interaction you have had beyond absolute necessity in the last six years has been your cat. That and you are doing nothing to discredit this ephebophile thing. Erica calls you almost crying but more pissed at you for leading her on and you tell her your apartment number so the the awful hitch in her breath slows down. Her breath calms and she tells you she’ll be there in half an hour and so help you god you had better be wearing pants she doesn’t hate.  
  
You clean, you change three times, you sit down with your head in your hands. You’re entire life is about impressing 16 year olds.  
  
Erica arrives with a big bag of clothes and a box of what smell like coffee and donuts. She promptly makes herself at home on your floor, sorting through your wardrobe and adding things she likes and taking away what she doesn’t.  
  
‘Why do you have so many sweaters?’ She asks. There are crumbs on her cheek.  
  
‘They’re comfortable.’ You say defensively. Yes, they’re the colour of puke and nightmares but you are not impressing anyone.  
  
‘He won’t like you in these.’ She says quietly.  
  
You think which one and then catch the he. ‘I’m-’  
  
‘Someone from the weird loner corner should be getting some, don’t you think?’ She stuffs the sweaters away more viciously than they deserve.  
  
‘Erica.’ You try for a comforting shoulder but you are still yourself and it only seems to make things worse. She places a hand on top of yours, fingers trembling. ‘I could order some thai.’  
  
‘You don’t want to sleep with me.’ She says decisively.  
  
‘It would be illegal.’  
  
‘But you’re not into me?’  
  
‘Not in that way.’  
  
She nods her head like that makes sense. ‘You’re buying me thai food and letting me sleep on your fold out. My parents are taking my brother to some convention for the weekend and I don’t- I’m just sick of being alone, you know?’  
  
You don’t. It might be a character flaw.  
  
\--  
  
Erica is still there in the morning, tucked under a nest of blankets. This is weird and you shouldn’t be doing it. You’re not very good at choice, you like having someone else having the final word. You make bad choices. Often you think you shouldn’t have any at all. The last one would require a permanent change you don’t let yourself think of very much and have barely wondered about at all since you moved back to Beacon Hills.  
  
You leave some bacon and eggs on the counter for her.  
  
\--  
  
Laura picks up the sixth time you call with a heavy sigh.  
  
‘Hey Derek.’ She says quietly. She’s short and a little cold. Pissed you woke her up but not in a family way. You are not her brother anymore. She has three more through Paul; one’s who kept their skin. You’re very tempted to hang up. ‘So what’s happening?’  
  
‘Nothing.’ You say. If you took the bracelet off now would you ever feel her across the bond? She shuffles a little and you hear the rustle of blankets and Paul’s sleepy murmuring.  
  
No, you wouldn’t.  
  
‘I still lov-’ Laura pauses, you can imagine her tongue in her cheek and her frustrated eyebrows. ‘I’m still here for you.’  
  
‘Yeah,’ would that you had a heart enough to break, ‘you too.’  
  
\--  
  
Something has left a body in the Hale House. You don’t go till high noon, when you’re sure official law will be there and unofficial law wouldn’t risk it.  
  
Kate is in the driveway of the Hale House shocking bright hair and legs against the burned remains. She is talking to the men in uniform. Offers herself as a hunter familiar with the area. The Sheriff, Stiles father, shakes her hand. Let’s her look a little closer. You are half hidden in the small crowd of nosy neighbours who undoubtedly followed the noise. Your hair is longer and your cheeks are red in the wind. If you were a wolf you could not hide from her.  
  
Kate’s hands skate the old wall, underneath what used to be your room. You want to believe it’s blasphemous for her to touch it. You want something from up high to pity you long enough to strike her down. Nothing happens and the bracelet is heavy on your wrist. Kate has always been an object of war; strong lines and everything shaped like it could be a knife.  
  
You’re soft again, not around the middle or in the face, you’re soft in your old sweaters and the beaten up shoes. You have smiled recently and you have worried. The muscles of your body have fallen from battle ready; soft because you’re not pretending to be hard. It would have been that way had you stayed a wolf. A soft thing padding itself for something it can’t win.  
  
Kate walks around and away. She doesn’t recognize you.  
  
\--  
  
Inside the house is the mauled and burned carcass of a man later revealed to be a Mr Scott Winter’s. He is 34 with a wife and five kids. You’ll know him as an alpha by the tattoo on his shoulder and the way his throat has been slashed open. You’ll know him as Alpha Pack by the burned sign on the door.  
  
\--  
  
Scott and Stiles have made a nest together in your living room. They’re hear more often than you care to acknowledge. Sugarbottom has thrown half your underwear out of the draw so she could sleep on the rest. Erica has left you three messages with smiley faces and lewd comments. She has her own mug and a half eaten burrito in the fridge. Scott and Stiles wake up, together, and they smile at you.  
  
‘We ate your food.’ Stiles says, sleepily tucked under Scott’s arm.  
  
‘Not the burrito though, smelled like a girl.’ Scott’s mouth pulls down and Stiles hand flexes. You don’t read the signs there. Can’t.  
  
If it were just you and your mad cat and your musty old apartment with the leaky tap and the weird mould, you’d go to sleep and move away and sell the house and get on with moving slowly in a world that does not fit you. But you are not alone and those kids will be eaten alive. You are small. You are as weak as you have ever been and these kids are brilliant in ways you have never imagined for yourself. There are no more heroes. There are no more wars. There are no more thrones. A crack may shiver through you and break your crown. You could split in the middle and have the dead forest and the dead wolves come howling out. You could save them, maybe, but it would not be unselfish. With as many words as you have trapped in your molars and refused your throat you would think now would be the time for freedom of speech.  
  
‘We want to help you.’ Scott says. You are not sure, at this moment, which one of them you are in love with.  
  
‘You can trust us.’ Stiles says. You are even less sure which one you hope is in love with you.  
  
The boys look to each other and you seem irrelevant now, more so than usual. Shut out your eyes and close off the world. You are not sure which one of them you belong to.  
  
\--  
  
Both. It’s both.  
  
\--  
  
The gas station at 4am has little to offer but junk food and porn. Unlike the 70% of other weird perverts that go there you’re here to pick up some gum and some milk.  
  
The cashiers name is Jerry and he has two kids and a wife he’s only 50% sold on at any point in time. You know this because you’ve spent a lot of time convincing him to cut you a deal on gas through smiling and tight shirts. Jerry waves you away, one hand still tracing the abs of the guy on the front of his workout magazine with a 10% ‘discount’ on your gas, half and half, and a packet of spearmint gum.  
  
‘Hey,’ an older man trying to pump up his tyres with the faulty air machine grabs your shoulder, ‘do you?’  
  
Yeah, sure.’ You take the pump, adjust the dials and hand it back. You notice his car, specifically the long drag marks, like claws, across the side, ‘it’s tricky.’  
  
‘Thanks for the help,’ he notices you noticing the car, ‘you would not believe what they have out in those woods. I’m Chris Argent, by the way.’  
  
‘Derek,’ you don’t offer a last name, the smell of smoke drying your throat, he doesn’t notice, ‘you’re a hunter? Professionally? Do we even have game around here?’  
  
‘Oh, plenty, if you know how to find it,’ he says.  
  
‘Where specifically,’ you ask too fast, his gaze turns assessing. You look down and away, ‘I’ve got some old family land around here, is all.’  
  
‘You should move out of town.’ Chris Argent says as he clasps your hand and squeezes, you grip back, intentionally humanlike. ‘Hunting season can get pretty brutal. You know, sometimes I think those old wolves hold grudges.’  
  
You smile politely until he leaves.  
  
\--  
  
Erica calls you on your off day and begs you to pick her up.  
  
‘Please, they’re gonna call my parents and I don’t want to-’ she pauses and you can hear the slamming of locker doors and harsh whispers, ‘I didn’t _mean_ to.’  
  
‘I’ll be there soon,’ you say, pulling on a shirt, grabbing your keys. When you get there she dashes down the steps, eyes huge in her face, and the red throat of one of the teachers yelling at her to slow down Reyes. She waves her hands as she gets in. ‘Go, go, go!’  
  
‘I didn’t mean to,’ she says once you’ve got the car moving, ‘but she was so rude to him and who the fuck does Lydia Martin think she is, anyway?’  
  
‘I’ve heard of her.’ From Stiles, in a wistful voice that speaks more of admiration than the romance he thinks it is.  
  
‘Everyone loves her.’ Erica doesn’t sound bitter, she sounds tired, ‘it would be nice, I think, to have the guarantee of attention.’ She pauses, ‘positive attention.’  
  
‘I like you.’ You switch the phone to loudspeaker as you get into the car. ‘You’re likable.’  
  
‘Great, the hot creepy guy who lives alone with his cat in the debris of his own takeaway boxes _likes me_. I might faint.’  
  
‘Well if you don’t _want_ your leftover pad thai.’  
  
She laughs. ‘There’s a guy I like, well, there’s a guy I like that I have a chance with. She just, they were partnered in biology, and she just said something belittling and rude and he, he never looks like anything hurts him and he’s nice. I just wanted her to have to feel ugly even if it was just for thirty seconds.’  
  
‘And?’  
  
She huffs. ‘I spilt frog intestines down her dress. Maliciously, apparently.’  
  
‘Erica,’ you say slowly, ‘has anyone ever told you, you’re a complete badass?’  
   
\--  
  
You dream of your mother throwing you into the air. Up and up and everytime you come down it’s someone different catching you, your father, Laura, Great Uncle Garrett, Aunt Sophia, Kate. Every time you come down you are older and scared and naked. Every time you come down Kate’s hands graze you and you are on fire. You land for the final time as a wolf with Kate’s heart in your throat. You have the boys by your side and you don’t feel the way you usually do about them, you feel the way Peter feels about them. You swallow. You burn.  
  
When you wake up you can hear Scott and Stiles talking about Peter, you can hear your cat purring above your head. You know Erica’s asleep on the couch. You drink three bottles of water anyway.  
  
\--  
  
It comes to this:  
  
Peter is going to use them to kill Kate. Kate can die. You don’t care. But it has been many years and you do not think you have it in you to care again as you do now. You will not love after these boys. It’s something you will nurture inside yourself. Darkly, hurriedly, tightly wound to the pressing columns of the few things you still believe. _The end comes. Your cat will only eat free range chicken. Summer clothes do not suit you. Everything is flammable if you try hard enough. You have split your heart in two and given away both halves._  
  
Certainty should be cold. It’s not.  
  
Peter doesn’t know you’re here. He can’t recognise you without the power of your wolf. That says terrible things about your family. Everyone knows their family isn’t perfect, all parents are fuck ups on some level. That he can’t look at you and see himself catching you when you jumped out of a window to see if you were superman, to see if your parents had found you in a field and that you are destined for some greatness, makes something in the tiniest piece of your heart that you’ve kept quake and shiver and freeze.    
  
It’s simple enough to kiss Sugarbottom on the head and pull on the clothes you have let her roll on. It’s simple enough to follow Peter’s tracks through the town in the sleepy morning, catch him crawling into the Argent house when everyone is away. Simpler still to take the gasoline you’ve stolen from various neighbours and shady parked cars and draw lines across the property, the stink noxious to your nose. Peter will notice, you realise, but it’s too late to turn back.  
  
The Argents kitchen is spacious. There are cookies on the counter. There are guns and bullets on the table. You sit on a chair that creaks and breathe very quietly. Peter has to know you’re here. There’s a handgun lying in the centre of the table and in your hands it feels too light for what it is. The purplish dust of wolfsbane covers your fingertips when you flip the safety.  
  
You don’t hear Peter approach, you just feel his grip at your neck, sharp claws blooding your neck. You kick him off and back, aiming the gun at his face. Peter sneers, ‘and which one are you?’  
  
‘Do I really look like a fucking Argent to you?’ You ask, fingers tremble on the trigger. Just one more push.  
  
The first shot breaks the china on the table, the second goes into the woodwork near Peter’s head.  
  
‘Derek?’ Peter says, but the third shot spirals through his mouth and it is hard to talk with most of your head red and pink splattered on the wall.  
  
You would use a gun, your head says, too chicken shit for claws.  
  
You would have made a shit alpha, some other voice, a kinder voice, don’t blame yourself for this.  
  
That’s it then, all your family gone but you, all the triggers pulled by you.  
  
Peter’s body is heavy, too heavy. You drag it into the basement and cover him in wolfsbane. His face is pale against the purple. His hands are unscarred. You hold his steadily cooling hand in yours. When the heat is all gone you find the old sword you know is down here, the one that is designed for this, you hack apart his body, cleave the head, put the pieces as far from each other as you can. Alpha’s can come back from a lot. Dousing the rest of the house in gasoline takes a few minutes, hand pressed to mouth, mouth tasting of Peter’s blood. You stand outside with the matches in your hands. It shouldn’t have been this easy.  
  
You breathe. You drop the match.  
  
\--  
  
Halfway across town and wolfsbane is still itching under your nose. The bracelet is still shining over the dirty hairless tan line. You buy your groceries. You stand in line. You pay with a hand that shakes so badly the change gunshots across the ground, _loud loud loud_ , covering the wail of sirens roaring past the store front.  
  
\--  
  
You do not see any of them for three days and it is almost like the world has gone back to normal.  
  
On a whim you go out to the Hale House at the next full moon. You think it might give you some closure. You walk up from the road, which takes a while but you’re in no hurry, when you get to the entrance you can hear the slide of a knife against metal, a girl sniffing, and her voice talking.  
  
‘Come on, sweetie, it’s easier than you think.’ Kate coos.  
  
‘We will not hurt you, Lydia.’ Chris says.  
  
You sneak into the house and carefully manoeuvre until you’re behind a thin wall, one layer separating you from them. You can see through a small hole. Lydia is a small copper and cream pile by the back wall. Stiles loves her and for that alone you would save her. Lydia has sharp eyes, sharper than most, and she is holding her belly like it might fall out. You would save her to save someone you loved pain but you will save her because she could be something you loved too.  
  
‘Have you turned?’ Kate has the barrel jammed next to her head.  
  
‘Lydia,’ Chris says soft voiced, ‘we’re going to help you. We know you killed Peter, after what he did to you no one would blame you.’  
  
She licks her lips, says snottily. ‘How does a bullet hole help me?’  
  
Kate looks gleeful. ‘We could cut you up instead.’  
  
You’re tired, you are so tired, and you’ve always seemed like such a terrible waste. Not the smart one or the fast one. You have never been good news. You have always been tired. Heroism requires a strong stomach and steady feet and you have neither. You want to save her, you want to believe you can, but the only strength you have is tied to the metal on your wrist and the only sanity you have is in the lock that keeps it closed. The wolf made mistakes. The wolf is the reason they died and if you are not the wolf you are not the reason. Keep the bracelet on. Save no one.  
  
Or-  
  
‘Wait,’ and Chris looks up, moves away, and the tiredness presses harder and stronger between your ribs. They have your heart and you are an easy target. ‘It was me.’  
  
‘Who the hell are you?’ Kate hisses. Ain’t that a laugh. Riot track bursting out of your lungs. Ha ha, she doesn’t even remember you.  
  
You lick your lips. You smile. ‘Your statutory rape victim and an ex-werewolf.’  
  
‘Mine?’ Kate says. ‘Derek?’  
  
‘Ex?’ Chris says. ‘Hale?’  
  
‘I’m in recovery,’ you say boldly. The catch on the bracelet is hot on your fingers. It makes a broken glass noise as it hits the ground.  
  
You are too tired to fight.  
  
You will anyway.  
  
\--  
  
They beat the crap out of you. Kate literally. It’s while she’s going to town on your ribs, snapping them waiting for half a second, for them to heal, then snapping again, it’s while Kate beats you open over and over and over, that you begin to feel something. It starts in your head, at the crown and slides all around you. Like water it parts into your intestines and swirls through your liver and kidneys, holding, before burying itself in your groin and pumping through your bones. You get hard, a little, which is mortifying with what’s happening elsewhere. More than that, your claws grow and you feel a knowledge deeper than nature that there are people out there that would rip apart anything that hurt you.  
  
Pack, the kind voice says, and you let it lull you to sleep for a bit, just until Kate has taken her hands out of you.  
  
\--  
  
It occurs, distantly, that Kate may _never_ let go of you.  
  
\--  
  
It’s Lydia that pushes it all back inside of you. You want to thank her, your bladder was getting cold being all exposed. When your eyes work again you can no longer see blue but it’s still enough to take stock of your surroundings. Kate is dead. Kate is very dead. Kate is a bunch of matter on the ground. Chris is lying in a heap, eyes too wide, eyes too keen and hurt. There is a handsome boy with blue eyes staring right at you. His eyes cut to Lydia and suddenly you understand the ache in Stiles when he talks about Lydia.  
  
‘Are you-’ he says to her  
  
She huffs, ‘well you certainly are.’  
  
‘McCall.’ He says and your heart beats a little too loud for your own ears. He does not hear it.  
  
There is a lot of blood and you notice the smell of piss, a womans, so at least you have that dignity. Not much else, your pants are destroyed and your dick is curved out of a hole in your underwear. You thank god you went back to the gym three weeks ago because all you have on your upper torso is a thin layer of fat, hair, and blood. Strangely, Sugarbottom’s hair is still stark against your clothes.     
  
‘You okay?’ The boy asks, standing between you and Lydia.  
  
‘You seen a bracelet?’ You reply, tucking yourself away. You stand and there must be more stuff stuck to you from the way your fingers crunch.  
  
‘Got it when Mr Argent tried to get away. It’s yours?’  
  
You nod and stretch your neck, your jaw is furious with you. ‘Yeah. It’s mine.’  
  
‘You don’t talk much.’  
  
‘Oh, he talks plenty,’ and that is a voice you know, ‘just leaves out the facts.’  
  
With wolf eyes Scott and Stiles are nearly blinding. It’s your own want turned over and pressed into a whole mess of instincts. You hate yourself for it. Hate yourself for liking it. ‘Maybe I was trying to protect you.’  
  
Scott huffs and you feel a keen need to show neck, to get on your knees. Not new urges at all. ‘You don’t really get that option anymore.’  
  
It’s a been awhile since you’ve had an alpha pissed at you, longer since it was nestled in your hindbrain and not deliberate choices. The need to make amends is terrible.  
  
You grit your teeth. ‘I’m an omega.’  
  
‘No you’re not.’ Stiles says. He steps forward and you realise it’s in him too. They split the alpha mantle.  
  
‘How?’  
  
‘I’m a witch,’ Stiles says, hands touching you and you wish you could be modest but it’s not in your nature and you like this. ‘The wolf thing got a little confused.’  
  
He seems pleased enough at the slight curve to your back, that you lean in when he moves away.  
  
‘You’re an idiot,’ Scott says kindly, ‘we should go though, now.’  
  
Scott and Stiles steady you out the door. You think very little and try to feel even less.  
  
\--  
  
They sleep around you, pressed up against your front and back in one of the shitty motels at the edge of town. They’re still young enough to have parents that ask questions; old enough that they can’t trust their parents to be strong enough for them. More than ever you realise that you are still too soft. They are not. You sleep with both of them breathing harshly in your too sensitive ears. Hovering and hollering in their sleep.  
  
You wake up with hot mouths on your neck. It’s both of them, Stiles angrily stripping away your defenses, shifting himself into the holes and corking it with sheer vicious want. Scott swoops in after, stitching across Stiles angry wounds, sanding away the hurt and pain but leaving a push, like a handprint that always faintly burns.  
  
‘Yes,’ you say clearly. Both of them look at you like you’re an idiot. The pack bond they’re building, the one they are breaking you apart to form anew, grasps around your lungs and holds. Your breathing falls into rhythm with theirs.  
  
‘You’re not doing that again.’ Stiles says, kissing his way from your fingers up, biting the thin skin between your fingers until it bursts and heals.  
  
‘I-’ you try but Scott slides down and takes the meat of your calves into his mouth, bites, hard.  
  
‘ _Never_ again.’ Scott says. You won’t, of course not, why do that when you could be here.  
  
‘Good,’ they both say and turn you onto your side. Stiles has the grip on your neck, fingers pressing just short of a choke hold. Scott’s making indents at your thighs, gripping. You can’t move and it’s so relieving you might cry.  
  
‘You missed this,’ Stiles says wonderingly, licking the shell of your ear. The hand that’s not gripping your neck wonders down your back, down and down and down to the swell of your ass, fingers dipping just in. ‘You don’t even like choices, Derek.’  
  
But you choose because you had to. You want to tell them that because this is too angry, too intense. Scott grips a little tighter, pull’s a leg up and begins pressing a legion of hickeys to your inner thighs. It hurts but your moored in the bond between both of them, they want it and you do too. Scott raises a mark that will stay over your femoral, at the just of your hipbones, over the swell of your heart. Stiles grins at your neck and shifts his hips until your both aligned not an inch of skin between you. You can feel your dick, hard and pulsing, drooling all over the bed; these sheets will be unsalvageable. You try for a thrust once. Scott laughs, not unkindly, and Stiles bites you.  
  
‘Stiles,’ Scott sounds almost out of control. Stiles grunts, removes himself from your back and plops back a second later. Lube sails over your head.  
  
Scott shakes his head, ‘that’s for you.’  
  
Stiles shoves up once, hard, and you realise they’ve planned this, they’ve thought about it.  
  
Suddenly you can’t breathe, the bond is constricting around your throat, it’s coming down between your legs and you’ll do whatever they want, however they want it, and it’ll be filthy and every time someone brushes by the bloody marks Scott’s leaving you’ll remember and you’ll ache.  
  
That was probably the point.  
  
‘I wasn’t running away from you,’ you say insistently. ‘I just didn’t want it anymore.’    
  
‘It all looks the same from here.’ Scott says, tugging your cock to get at your balls. ‘You’re not going away again.’  
  
He bites. You’d yell but Stiles has slipped his finger down to circle your hole. You push back, which makes Scott tighten his grip on your cock and draw tight circles around the head, playing with the foreskin, and then you thrust forward and Stiles presses the tip of his finger, warm and lubed, in and out too slowly to do you any good. It’s unbearable.  
  
‘This is unfair.’ You try going back and forth for awhile and they seem happy enough to let you.    
  
‘Unfair is being in our pack and keeping it from us.’ Stiles says.  
  
Scott sighs, pulling your cock slower, gathering the precum in his hands and coating your cock, your balls, the hickeys on your thighs, ‘we wanted you.’  
  
You close your eyes. ‘Fuck.’  
  
‘Yep,’ Scott says cheerfully.  
  
‘Well, no, we’re saving that.’ Stiles fingers slip down, lifting a thigh, then he’s sliding his cock underneath your balls. The skin is still hot and sensitive from Scott, you shiver once and Scott shifts away and suddenly you’re belly down. Hands trapping yours above your head and hips rolling you down harshly against the mattress, the tip of your cock rubbed back and forth across the mattress. You come up off the mattress a tiny bit for a better angle, long hard dick rubbing over and over never quite where you want it. The mess in your ass is both cool and warm at the same time. You get why Scott gave you some lubricant, this would chafe horribly without. Stiles buries his head against your back and moans long and hard. He rises up on one hand, the other still making sure you’re pinned down. You can hear one of them sucking fingers and then they’re back at your hole. Stiles other hand lands beside your head. You hear slick hands on skin and then Scotts long drawn out moan, a second later Stiles is pulling out from between your thighs and cumming over the long expanse of your back. Fingers are pushing at your hole, stuffing something inside. Stiles is still breathing heavily but you can hear him and Scott kissing, talking about how you look with the mess on your back, dripping from your ass.     
  
‘Never again.’ Scott says as they rub the mess in.  
  
‘We’re really serious,’ Stiles turns you over carefully and looks at your dick, angry red and brushing against your stomach. ‘I have no idea what we’d do if something like this happens again.  
  
One bends down for you dick and the other bites into your mouth for a kiss. You stop trying to figure out which one is which. It means the same thing, anyway.  
  
\--  
  
You wake up before both of them and somehow manage to crawl away back to your apartment. Sugarbottom is waiting at the front door, bright eyes and the thinnest trail of blood streaking across her nose. She says hello and then returns to the mess she’s made of your bedroom. You watch TV and think about a life by yourself in a world that’s ill fitting and tiny.    
  
The bracelet would be easy enough to slip on. This town would be easy enough to slip out of.  
  
The TV turns to a late night commercial on how to get cat hair out of your carpet.  
  
\--  
  
You go talk to Erica, buried behind her usual stack of books. She’s pulled out a few on trench code and the second world war. She hasn’t cracked the spines.  
  
She smiles and she is beautiful and you wish that everyone would love her as much as you do. ‘What’s up sauerkraut? Haven’t seen you.’  
  
With Erica it’s like being buried in an island made of old languages with no past or future tense. You realise that what you liked about it was that you never had to trust her. She won’t judge you. You can’t blink and have her heavy and fire swallowed at your feet. She’s a wonderful, brilliant crutch and you have been treating her like she is less than she really is.  
  
A lot of people have, probably.  
  
The pack is beating in your ears. You feel it as iron needles through your heart. You don’t love her, not the way she wants to be loved, she wants a hurricane and you want an ocean, but you think you’d like to know what she smells like early in the morning after rolling in the leaves. It’s not bringing Laura back but it is making a choice to let someone in. Change a little.  
  
You say. ‘What if I said I could make it all go away?’  
  
\--

**Author's Note:**

> As always if I need additional tags tell me and they'll go up.


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